Bush's communication breakdown.

A Miers post-mortem from the Wall Street Journal:

Nothing is more important than that President Bush preserve sufficient standing with the public to see this commitment [in Iraq] through. The Miers nomination threatened that standing, and its withdrawal restores the conservative political support he will need to defend him against daily opposition to his 9/11 presidency.

Still, there is a lesson from the Miers nomination relevant to whether the president succeeds in Iraq and with the policy beneath it. His government has to do a better job of communicating the necessity and the substance of this action. The troops deserve better on this score. Just as the Miers nomination was a mystery and was allowed to remain a mystery, the war in Iraq most of the time has been allowed to drift through the mind of the American public on not much more than al-Zarqawi's news budget for the Western media. Just as the Miers nomination failed because of inadequate explanation, Iraq too may falter for the same reason. It should not.

Well put. I think the Miers nomination was always a bad one, but the failure to explain it was even worse, and worse than that is Bush's failure to communicate persuasively about the war in Iraq. Why is he acting like a tired and beaten man? Talk to us!